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Only 31% of California voters want to keep paying for bullet train

latimes.com

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Re: Only 31% of California voters want to keep paying for bullet train

#101

Post by DrScump »

ebikelaw wrote: post #53
Agustus wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Killing it would be far sighted. Technology is improving transportation methods, we have buses and planes that can do the same thing as this train at much cheaper rates and without tax dollars to construct or maintain.

There is no bus or plane that can do anything like what HSR can do. That's the entire point of the project. It will triple the capacity of our north-south transportation system at a fraction of the cost of equivalent airport capacity. This is something that people don't understand when they haven't travelled enough to experience good rail systems. Rail has massive capacity, 100k people per hour per track direction. T…

  100k people per hour per track direction
Your source for this statistic?

Re: Only 31% of California voters want to keep paying for bullet train

#102

Post by DrScump »

basementcat wrote: post #23
jessaustin wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every big public project is a massive boondoggle. Should we just stop doing things?

The Golden Gate Bridge was finished ahead of schedule and under budget.

It had the benefit of cheap Depression-era labor and vastly inferior worker safety constraints (12 died).

The disastrous new Bay Bridge project was more representative of modern California infrastructure projects.

Re: Only 31% of California voters want to keep paying for bullet train

#103

Post by DrScump »

mistrial9 wrote: post #34

many hidden assumptions and divisions here.. - Bay Area / Sacramento area voters versus LA versus who - the traffic and pollution of cars fits many individuals just fine, and the ability to think and act in larger groups is rarer than one might think - every govt project has cost problems, why is this different Trains with modern power sources seem like a really good idea; the rest is project management.

  Trains with modern power sources seem like a really good idea
Tell BART that. Their new Antioch extension will be diesel powered.

Re: Only 31% of California voters want to keep paying for bullet train

#104

Post by candiodari »

yongjik wrote: post #75
rayiner wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's completely divorced from reality. Even poor people own cars! 80% of people in poverty have access to a vehicle.[1] $0.55/mile is about $120 for an LA to SF trip. For a family of four, this train is $350. Which one do you think a low-income family is going to take to visit relatives for Christmas? In any case, poor people who don't own cars rely on busses and subways--which this boondoggle does nothing for. [1]…

Even poor people are forced to own cars because the whole cityscape is designed with that assumption, so they have to shell out thousands of dollars they could've used on food or other niceties, to buy a barely functioning vehicle that costs them more money and time to repair constantly.

And the alternative would be ?

(Note: those poor people need to be able to do 30-40kg groceries, at a distance of, say 5-10 kilometers, when they're 50 years old)

Re: Only 31% of California voters want to keep paying for bullet train

#105

Post by mmt »

dragonwriter wrote: post #90
slg wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And another difference is that the development of a rail line requires billions in additional public funds (and also takes years if not decades to build) while the development of driverless cars is being paid for by private businesses. Wasn't your initial argument about saving money?

> And another difference is that the development of a rail line requires billions in additional public funds (and also takes years if not decades to build) So does building the same capacity in roads. And, even moreso, so does building that plus the extra capacity required for the increased load required to handle on-demand driverless vehicles.

You're implying that there's a direct equivalence, but that's not really true.

Although the parent comment said "rail line", since TFA is, specifically, about HSR, that's a unique rail line in an existing system, which has something of an all-or-nothing construction problem. Having it half finished won't reduce the train travel time between LA and the SFBA for anyone.

Conversely, road capacity can be added incrementally, and, in many cases, when it is, it has an immediate effect for that section [1], providing relief as soon as the money and/or construction resources are available. In rural California, that's more likely to be months and fractions of a billion, not years and billions. The urban parts are slower and more expensive, but only proprotionally so (i.e. HSR is yet slower and even more expensive there, too).

You haven't presented any evidence for your assumption that on-demand driverless vehicles would require extra capacity, especially down a long-haul corridor. At best, that's some very heavy speculation on the operating cost (dominated by tires, suspension, electricty, I'd expect) versus capital cost of keeping enough spares in each metro.

[1] Yes, I'm aware that, at times, it can have a paradoxically negative effect on congestion, but I'm pretty sure that doesn't happen for capacity increases on what are essentially point-to-point corridors.

Re: Only 31% of California voters want to keep paying for bullet train

#106

Post by mmt »

ebikelaw wrote: post #53
Agustus wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Killing it would be far sighted. Technology is improving transportation methods, we have buses and planes that can do the same thing as this train at much cheaper rates and without tax dollars to construct or maintain.

There is no bus or plane that can do anything like what HSR can do. That's the entire point of the project. It will triple the capacity of our north-south transportation system at a fraction of the cost of equivalent airport capacity. This is something that people don't understand when they haven't travelled enough to experience good rail systems. Rail has massive capacity, 100k people per hour per track direction. T…

> It will triple the capacity of our north-south transportation system at a fraction of the cost of equivalent airport capacity. > This is something that people don't understand

You may be confusing a lack of understanding with straight up apathy.

Put another way, I don't think people care if the capacity is tripled. They're not interested in traveling with 100,000 of their closest friends that hour. They're interested in getting where they want to go, faster/cheaper/easier.

Pushing system capacity as a feature has a bit of a socialist bent, and that's a hard sell in the US.

>That's 500 lanes of theoretical freeway capacity, or 1000 lanes under realistic operating conditions

Also, I think your calculation are off by at least an order of magnitude. I thought that freeways can carry about 2000 vehicles per hour (on modestly congested urban freways). Assuming at least dual-occupancy vehicles, that's only 25 lanes.

> more than the total capacity between all Bay Area and all L.A.-area airports, even if you operated that route solely with widebody jets, which we don't.

This is an excellent argument against all that extra capacity being some kind of critical feature. If (you may be arguing "when" not "if", but that's not a given) we really need it, we could upgrade airport capacity to use more widebody jets.

In essence, we already have spare capacity (which could, by the way, be used to go other places), and you're suggesting it's critical that we take the opportunity to greatly increase the spare capacity just to go between the Bay Area and LA. I disagree.

Re: Only 31% of California voters want to keep paying for bullet train

#107

Post by mmt »

DrScump wrote: post #101
ebikelaw wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no bus or plane that can do anything like what HSR can do. That's the entire point of the project. It will triple the capacity of our north-south transportation system at a fraction of the cost of equivalent airport capacity. This is something that people don't understand when they haven't travelled enough to experience good rail systems. Rail has massive capacity, 100k people per hour per track direction. T…

100k people per hour per track direction Your source for this statistic?

I don't have any primary sources offhand, but the closest thing I last looked at was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_rail which has a number of 25k/h for light rail (pretty low speed, single-deck, presumably short trains).

I'd say 4x that amount for a full-sized HSR train is credible. It's just that that's a maximum. I don't believe that ridership will ever be high enough to approach that number, unless air travel is outlawed.

Re: Only 31% of California voters want to keep paying for bullet train

#108

Post by mmt »

AFNobody wrote: post #97
Gargoyle wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you been on that freeway? It's not really a bullet train-friendly route.

Have you bothered to look around when you drove through it? The amount of tunneling/demolition involved is quite viable. lol.

Umm.. I'd say that merely looking, especially by a non-expert, is more than just a little naive.

A famous civil engineer, no less than William Mulholland, had his career ended by the geology of those hills.

Re: Only 31% of California voters want to keep paying for bullet train

#109

Post by IshKebab »

casefields wrote: post #72
jhpriestley wrote: post #45

I think this is a very misleading headline. 49 percent support the high speed rail project in this poll, based on a neutrally worded question. The 31% figure comes from a leading question that starts with "The latest estimates for California’s high-speed rail project are that it will cost up to $77 billion dollars and will be finished in 2033. This estimate is nearly twice as much as the original estimated cost." The…

Totally misleading to be up front about expanding costs. No one has to right to know what the taxpayer could be on the hook for...

It's a classic loaded question technique. Emphasise the bad things before asking the question. This is pretty obvious.

Do you think they would have got the same result if it was worded "A high speed train will reduce journey times by X%, reduce congestion by Y% on the roads and reduce CO2 pollution by Z%. Do you think we should build one?"

Re: Only 31% of California voters want to keep paying for bullet train

#110

Post by IshKebab »

mmt wrote: post #107
DrScump wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100k people per hour per track direction Your source for this statistic?

I don't have any primary sources offhand, but the closest thing I last looked at was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_rail which has a number of 25k/h for light rail (pretty low speed, single-deck, presumably short trains). I'd say 4x that amount for a full-sized HSR train is credible. It's just that that's a maximum . I don't believe that ridership will ever be high enough to approach that number, unless air trav…

> I don't believe that ridership will ever be high enough to approach that number

Trains in the rush hour in the UK are pretty much always full, with people standing up. The tube at rush hour looks like this:

https://static.standard.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/image/2...

If it's not too expensive or infrequent I imagine it will be very popular.

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